With most country football leagues now finished up, and Silly Sundays, Mad Mondays, Tacky Tuesdays, Wacky Wednesday, etc etc are now drawing to an end, pre-season is just around the corner for some, for others, it's off is the very distant future. However, if you are serious about your game, and want to be fit for the 2011 season, keep reading.
Those who know me, or read some of my blog, you would know I had a strong passion to be a personal trainer/strength and conditioning coach. During this time, I studied up on programs, exercises and diets, mostly based on sport training, so I feel like I can pass on some of this knowledge to you.
You won't be seeing any actually programs on here, because, what works for one person, doesn't mean it will work for the next. So I could write out this great program, and you might see great results, but Bill or Frank might not improve a single bit. Training programs have to be taliored to your current fitness, goals and schedule. I will cover some of these, but to save posting a monster long blog, I will break it up into parts.
Part 1, Rest and Off-Season
Part 2, Pre-Season Testing
Part 3, Pre-Season Programming
Part 4, If I Forgot Anything
PART 1, REST AND OFF-SEASON
With the season over, your body needs to rest and recover after the brutual season it took. This is also a good time to see the physio about any niggling injuries, or rest any sore spots, as this will be your big pre-season.
Usually, the off-season is regarded as the time when the athlete aims to gain strength and mass. If you consider yourself a 'big boy' and think you should focus on cardio, try and put them thoughts aside, as below I will guide you through an off-season that will build up strength and help shed some of that fat.
The off-season on average, runs from October to the start of December, so about 3 months, 2 if stretched for time. So in this time, don't expect to see huge gains, like an increase of 50kg on your bench! This is the time to slowly (so you don't injure yourself) develop functional strength and help build a base for the pre-season.
First thing to take care of is to test your current strength and endurance. So below are a couple tests which can help.
Bench Press 1RM - Build up and see how much you can bench press for 1 rep.
Squat 1RM - Same as Bench press, but with a Squat.
Deadlift 1RM - Same as above, but for a deadlift.
2km Bike Sprint - On a exercise bike, time how long it takes to ride 2km.
100m Sprint - Mark out 100m on the oval, straight line, and time how fast you run it in.
Push-ups In 2 Minutes - See how many push-ups you can rep for in the space of 2 minutes.
Crunches In 2 Minutes - Same as above, but for crunches.
These tests will help determine where you are at physically, and when undertaking the benchpress and squat, always have 1 or 2 friends spotting you incase you fatigue and can't complete the rest. In fact, whenever working out and aiming to beat your PB, always have a spotter, we don't need injuries in the off-season.
Another thing before I lay out some off-season program principles, don't try and do too much! If you know you can only benchpress 60kg, the next week don't aim to bench 80kg, that is only asking for trouble. When you walk into the gym, whether its a big flashy commerical one, or a dusty bench in your mate's shed, leave your ego at the door.
If you are unsure on any exercises, youtube them! Don't rely on pictures in Google Images, actually see how the movement occurs, and look for key points. If need be, get someone to tape you performing the exercise and compare it. This might appear silly, but perfect form is needed, especially when deadlifting and squatting.
So I think I got the basics covered, and to avoid you sueing me, I made sure to tell you to not overdo it and watch your form. So now, let's see how to set-up a off-season program.
After you have tested yourself, you need to set out some realistic goals. What do you want to achieve over the off-season? And if your only goal is to increase your benchpress, please stop reading, because the squat and deadlift are far more important exercises.
The next major factor is, how many days a week can you workout? Someone who can work out 4 days a week needs a different program compared to someone who can only squeeze in 2 days. But for the case of this programming, let's say you are able to workout 3 days a week. Which in fact, is plenty of time.
As previously mentioned, the key outcome desired at the end of off-season is increased strength, so let's make that our goal. Now, this is where sets and reps become key focual point in your workout, as they affect how your body reacts to the workload. Many magazines will tell you, 1-5 rep range is good for strength, 6-10 for muscle mass, 10+ is good for endurance, which is true. So a lot of our sets will only go to 5 reps, apart from one exercise.
Less is more, and this is what your off-season weights program will be. It will contain minimal number of exercises, low reps, mid range of sets, but high weights (realitive to your strength of course). Okay, now let's just get into it, enough yack, let's get a program going.
You want to make sure you warm up for 5 minutes before each workout, this helps increase blood flow, prepares the body for what is about to happen, and keeps you loose and warm. And it is always key, KEY, the first exercise you do, do 2 light warm-up sets.
The first exercise of your program is your bread-and-butter. This will be the big exercise, and the choice of exercise is crucial. You want a exercise that activates as much muscle as possible, to promote the most strength gains. You would always choose one from The Big 3, Bench Press, Squat and Deadlift. These exercises use mutiple muscles, with deadlift being the most effective, but a variation of the squat, a Box Squat, is also effective.
What I forgot to mention earlier is, these workouts are regarded as full-body workouts. Which means, you focus on working your body out as a whole, and not focus on 1 or 2 muscle groups. A typical bodybuilding weekly schedule may go like
Monday - Chest and Triceps
Wednesday - Back and Biceps
Fridays - Legs
Us, being athletes, will be like
Monday - Full-body
Wednesday - Full-body
Friday - Full-body
So, let's say we chose the Squat as our main exercise, what we want to do is warm the body up with 2 light sets, then chuck on the plates. Last year I experimented with doing 5 sets, with the first set being 5 reps, then increased the weight a little, next set 4 reps, next set 3 reps, and so on, til i did 1 set of 1, with most weight. I also tried where i did 2 sets of 5 reps, 1 set of 3 reps, 1 set of 1 (at my most maximum weight), than the last set, back at 5 reps with the original weight. These seemed to work out good, and with the weight increase, a simple 2.5kg each side will add up at the end, first week or two, no need to rush, you are finding out where you are at.
The next exercise will generally work the other part of the body, so if you did squats as your first exercise, a good second exercise would be a upper-body, if you benched as your first, lower-body for your second. This exercise, the set and reps will be about 3-4 sets of 5 reps, at a increasing weight each set. But, you aren't increasing it by alot, or decreasing the reps each set. The purpose of this exercise is to help build the other part of your body, without taxing your body too much. Your first exercise is meant to be the big one, which tax you, the next couple are just complimenting it. Below are a list of exercises which are good (B t w, no machines allowed, only free weights, will explain later)
Upper-body
Row (barbell, dumbell, one-arm, whatever tickles you, but no machines)
Pull-up/chin-up
Overhead shoulder press
Dumbbell benchpress
Floor press
Weighted push-ups (close grip is also good here)
Lower-body
Lunge
Step-up
Dumbbell squat
Box Squat (dumbbell or barbell)
Weighted back extension
Now you are probably thinking, "Hey, what about the guns man, I wanna work my guns!" News for you, we are not going to single out the bicep or tricep during the off-season. Once you start working out, doing only a few big exercises, you will notice that your biceps and triceps will get a big workout, without directly working them. Rowing motions, and pull-ups, will not only work your back, but also your biceps. While benching is working your chest, shoulders and triceps.
Your third and final exercise, you choose one from the list above, but you lower the weight and increase the reps. So you are looking at 3-4 sets, at 6-8 reps at a slightly lower weight. By now you will nearing wrecked, so this is to just engage a little more muscle.
Now, rest between sets are important, as if you don't rest enough, your next set will suffer and you won't get the desire. However, rest too long and you lose focus and the 'warmed up' feeling. If you rest about 2 minutes between each set on your first exercise, and then 1 minute between sets on the other two, then that should be fine.
So your workout should basically look like this,
Exercise 1, Upper Body, 5 sets, 5 reps/4 reps/3 reps/2 reps/1 rep (at increasing weight)
or, 5 sets, 2 sets of 5 reps, 1 set of 3 reps, 1 set of 1 rep, 1 set of 5 reps
Exercise 2, Lower Body, 5 sets of 5 reps
Exercise 3, Upper-body, 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps
OR
Exercise 1, Lower Body,
Exercise 2, Upper Body
Exercise 3, Lower Body
Aim to alternate this, so one workout start out with the upper body being the main, then next workout, lower body as the main, and so on.
Now I was hoping to not make these blogs so long, but this is being quite a long one. So I'm going to end this now, and pick up on it in the morning, or late afternoon. So what we are going to learn in the next blog is, diet during the off-season and some more on weight training.
From The One They Call Anthony, This Is The Life And Times
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